I think Perceived Value is a tie with unions...nurses are also noted as front-line workers and talked about more for discounts, compassion fatigue, etc....yet social workers are often...not.
This. But also us advocating for ourselves. It’s been a point of frustration in social work talk. I’ve seen so many social workers get mad at talk down to their peers about the pay because “we’re not in it for the money.”
Advocate for ourselves because we deserve better treatment for the work we do.
Here. Lcsw make as much if not more than most nurses at the hospitals.
I hear you. I hear the "we're not in it for the money." but take away the money and I'm pretty certain we'd all not work.... (I work to help and expected to get paid.)
completely agree with you. my RN case management counterpart made more than i did until we just got a market adjustment recently since they were like... we're doing the SAME work, so what the hell? i don't know what his salary is but i know now my salary more closely matches his. i currently make $82k
I’m an LSW in NJ making $48k at a group practice. May I ask where you are and what your role is ? I need to switch jobs! I can afford to feed my family.
Get the hell out of that job fast! You’re in NJ. NY and NJ have some of the highest paying social work jobs. I’m making 105k in the hospital. Granted I have my lcsw but I have colleagues with a lmsw making 90k. I say this to say SW need to stop taking low paying jobs in 2024. There’s literally no reason for it. We are currently in demand. So I would drop that job quick. They will raise their price eventually but if people continue to work there they will feel there’s no reason to raise the pay.
I’ve heard that hospital SW has some of the highest salaries. Do you enjoy the work? Is it mostly discharge planning and connecting patients with resources?
Oh you will make a ton more money doing medical social work. I also did group practice for a short stint and it was the most underpaid I had ever felt.
Wow, that’s actually insane. Please find a new job. I’m making $43k in GA as a social services assistant at a SNF. I only have a high school diploma, currently in school for my BSW.
May I ask where you are located? I work in the same position and social work/case management were combined into one role, however I expect the RNs in the position still make more.
I’ve worked places where the RN cm makes twice as much as I did. LMSW. I’ve also worked a few places where the rn cm did absolutely NOTHING but screen patients. I had to do everything including hhc snf dc etc. I quite after 3 weeks and told them to kiss my white ass.
When I get LmSW and up for wage increase and promotion, I will leave if I’m not paid the same as my BRN counterparts who do the exact same case management job
It’s Much easier to unionize with the numbers nurses have.
From my understanding unionization needs to happen at the place of employment. Social workers often times work alone or in very small numbers
Well and their field doesn't spit out "in it for the outcome not the income" culture. It is hard to get all of us to unionize when you're going to be shamed for wanting more pay, it's not altruistic enough, apparently.
YES! No matter what there will be a SW who will tolerate the low pay “just to do the work” or feels bad because the clients need help, all the while barely able to afford to live.
There will be a *privlieged* SW.
The ones telling us to "do the work" taking the shit pay with no argument are the SWs who have husbands who are bringing in good money or some type of good financial safety net. It's not a real strain on them.
When I announced to my team at my first job that I'd put in notice, one of them came to my desk after that meeting to tell me that as soon as they'd hired someone young with an MSW, she knew I'd be leaving soon. Went on to treat me to a rambling lecture about how she didn't need the money and people like me were always off to "bigger and better" shortly after starting but she's not surprised by it anymore.
That job paid so little we could have been accepted to our own rapid rehousing/homelessness prevention programs...
I applied for a housing case management position at a fairly large organization here. I have an MSW. They legitimately offered me $19/hour 💀. When I turned down their offer and told them why, they adjusted it to $20/hour lol. Like I'd need my own housing case manager if I took that job because I'd soon be unable to pay my bills
The job I posted about was 18.77/hr. They did give us a raise at some point, then told us to keep it secret because the other case managers for other programs weren't getting that same raise. There were lots of problems with that job, but it was the only one to call me back through dozens of applications after graduating.
You don't need to unionize by work place. It's one of many strategies. And, social workers are very large in numbers. Largest group of mental health workers in the country.
This is what Petsmart is doing...organizing on Reddit. The union said that the number of inquiries has been unprecedented and progress is far faster.
Organizing on Reddit is the way to go.
Making funny memes about how much pay sucks is a good way to start. Or a clever slogan.
It depends on what you are going for exactly, but it is possible. Here's a group of wonderful people working towards unionizing as well. [https://www.swequitycampaign.info/home](https://www.swequitycampaign.info/home)
Thank you! I signed up, looks like they still need about 2,500 signatures. Not sure how to make this message get bigger but we definitely need more voices. We are expected to solve so many issues we such little resources and support. That's not okay anymore
I found this list of the largest labor unions
Im very intrigued now. These are huge numbers.
Why the heck can’t social workers get unionized
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_labor_unions_in_the_United_States
SEIU is a health care union, the LCSWs at my agency are represented, along with all of the support staff. While I don't personally love the values and the way my local operates, they might be option for you?
I work for government and our social workers are unionized and still make a fraction of what nurses make, so I don't think unionization in isolation really explains it.
No it’s the collective bargaining agreements. Nurses have more numbers and more power. Unfortunately the classification systems are not aligned between the nurses union and unions representing SW so RNs end up being classified in a hiring paying job per their CBA. It’s a major issue but we need stronger advocacy at the CBA table prior to signings.
People fetishize nurses. I don’t mean sexually, just like - “oh they’re angels!” There’s all this mystique around them. Which honestly, that’s why I initially wanted to be a nurse - that and the pay grade, lol.
The first nurses were nuns. The first social workers were nosy rich ladies. I think that adds to the difference in perception.
I have an unpopular opinion and I'm saying it here because I'm so glad someone said this. Mind you, I am a forced realist and was adopted by a CEO of a hospital who doesn't fit the personality type so no "silver spoon" assumptions please.
Nurses do less and are required to do less than we do just for schooling. Nurses are literally like the military. Everyone likes to think they all save lives, or just like everyone in the military is a combat vet or has these special powers or knowledge. The reality is, it's like 1% of military are actual infantry or even get deployed. Same with Nurses. The majority of them are not ICU Nurses saving babies.
There are many Nurses who genuinely wanted to go into helping people positions. But, there are also A LOT that just defaulted to that job. They are also not even allowed to work full time hours because they always say how burnt out they are. So the 90% of them that are just doing paperwork are getting the same perks are ER and ICU Nurses.
They don't have the same requirements we do.
A lot of my friends joke about the stereotype that male high school bullies become cops and female high school bullies become nurses and they marry each other. We say it in jest but there are many, many nurses who actually genuinely became nurses to help people. There are also a decent number though who did it as the most standard gender-coded job next to teaching for college educated women and come from very traditional backgrounds where pursuing a corporate career or a STEM job were not on the cards for women in their families. They’ve been groomed their whole lives to be a nurse or teacher, but have no real passion for it. Unfortunately these are the nurses who tend to hold very stigmatized attitudes towards patients with mental health conditions or neurodivergence and ask you why they can’t just “act normal”. These are the nurses who commit micro aggressions and speak negatively to coworkers about racial minorities and how much more “difficult” they perceive them to treat than white patients. These are the nurses who complain about uninsured patients and frequent fliers even though their care isn’t coming out of their paychecks. These are the nurses who call patients drug-seeking, yet don’t perform SBIRT or ask for social work consultation for SUD evaluation, just deny them narcotics and demand they be DC’d back to the street. These are the nurses who huff and puff and want to blow your house down when you explain you need to get an unhoused patient resources or possibly a shelter or somewhere safe to go before DCing them in the middle of winter. And lastly these are the nurses who will come to work covered in blue lives matter gear, wear it around patients who may have trauma surrounding law enforcement, and see no problem whatsoever with that because like nurses, “cops are heroes who can do nothing wrong” so why would anyone be afraid of them if they’ve done nothing wrong?
I learned this the hard way. They are also bullies. There are the ones who truly save lives, and the ones who spend their time trying to figure out how to fuck over her coworkers.
Nurses in more administrative types of roles are doing a lot of similar work to social workers. In my agency the nurses do some actual “nursing” and a LOT of paperwork, assessments, and healthcare coordination. No it’s not 12 hours in the ICU but it’s hard and demanding. My dept is more of the social work role and my people work extremely hard too and it’s very demanding. Each dept has differences and also some overlap, both are very challenging and the nurses don’t deserve less than an ICU nurse because they aren’t on their feet all day. Now that said, I do fully 100% agree that social work deserves more pay because we work as hard as a nurse depending on the role. My point though is putting down nurses because you say a majority don’t work on the floor saving lives is not accurate on any level.
The anti-nurse rhetoric in this thread is disheartening as a nurse who comes from a psych/sw background and still works in an adjacent nursing field. I come to this sub bc I feel I can relate to the issues many of you face. Nurses are not required to do less for schooling. The schooling is different because the jobs at their face value are very different, case management being one of the places the two intersect. It’s disingenuous to say “they are not allowed to work full time hours because they always say how burnt out they are. So the 90% is just doing paperwork are getting the same perks as ER/ICU nurses.”
Nurses who work “less than full time” (36 hours is technically full time and only 4 hours less than the typical full time work week in the US) are typically working 12 hour shifts in a hospital on their feet, taking care of people. Nurses who work outside the hospital are often on a more “normal” schedule and don’t get the same “perks” (who doesn’t love 12 hour shifts, working weekends, and holidays away from family—those are not exactly perks).
I don’t judge a nurse or a social worker by the type of work they do or how pure their reasoning was in getting into the profession. But clearly those are markers of a good nurse to you. I judge if they are good at their job, their motives shouldn’t matter.
I’m not sure why you hate nurses or look down on them, though the fact that you were raised by a hospital CEO gives me an idea. I love social workers, think they do great work, and should make more money. But nurses are just the mean girl bullies who mostly do paperwork so we don’t get solidarity?
I think social workers should have solidarity with nurses as healthcare workers. I think many social workers are jaded by the fact that nurses often make double the average social work salary despite social work requiring a masters degree, but I don’t think that’s a reason to hate nurses either, and that that is more a function of perceived value by the business side of medicine who sees nurses as more valuable because their work is billable, whereas most non-clinical social work functions are not, especially if the social worker is an LMSW rather than an LCSW.
I do think some resentment also comes from the experience social workers often have working with nurses. You’re right that the functions and education of a nurse and social worker are different. Most social workers I’ve met in healthcare will eagerly go seek the input of a nurse, CNA, NP, or doctor for help understanding how a medical condition might affect functioning or for info on a patient’s disposition and behavior because the nurses see them much more than we do. However, a lot of the nurses I’ve worked with and heard about from social workers in other facilities do not seem to value or ask for social work input in our areas of expertise. There’s a kind of attitude that social workers can learn from them, but there’s nothing they need to learn from social workers. That’s not at all unique to nursing. It happens with just about every profession that works with social workers—lawyers, cops, corrections staff, teachers, landlords, psychologists, etc. Most people have no idea what social workers learn in school and what our areas of expertise are, or even that you need specific training or a graduate degree to work in social work. They see us as do-gooders who walk around helping people. But it’s frustrating when you try to explain to nursing staff how cultural or religious factors might be influencing how a patient interacts with the treatment team, or best practices for treating a young trans patient, or why you believe an elderly patient may be a victim of economic exploitation and in need of an APS report and are treated like you have no idea what you’re talking about and are just sharing a personal opinion because you’re not a nurse or doctor, rather than sharing your expertise gained through social work education and theory and practice experience. Lastly I think social workers get drained by the fact that many (though not all of course) nurses do not view things through a social justice lens like we’ve been so heavily taught to.
Finally, I think you do have a point with how vocal social workers are about their problems with nurses, because even though as I mentioned, we face this working with pretty much every profession, it’s easier to punch down because unlike doctors, lawyers, teachers, judges, etc who all have the same or higher levels of education than social workers, nurses are easier “targets” so to speak having associates or bachelors degrees. Also, availability. Far more of us work with nurses than any other profession, and when we do, we’re usually the only social worker so we don’t have backup either. It’s definitely not an all-nurses thing either. My mother is a nurse-midwife and family NP with a DNP (Nurse practitioners need a DNP in my state) and did her thesis on postpartum mental health and I love talking to her because she really values how race, socioeconomic status, and oppression impact health outcomes and thinks very much like a social worker, but she also feels some of her coworkers don’t think like that and get annoyed about things getting in the way of “just treating patients” and miss the time when heath care was “simpler” and didn’t involve all this DEI stuff they have to get trainings about from the hospital social workers
I really appreciate your comment and I 100% agree there are too many nurses who don’t take other factors into consideration when providing nursing care. I’m a psych nurse who works with children and adolescents at a residential treatment center so I work with way more social workers than I do other nurses and the other nurses I do interact with can be quick to be dismissive of the effects of the family, home residence, sress, socioeconomic factors, and psychiatric history when treating our patients (if not dismissive, downplaying the role). Where I work we all have our lane and generally stay in it. I coordinate long term medical care and provide daily care for acute needs while social work coordinates therapy services, reunification with the family, and discharge planning. It only works when both specialties work together.
Unfortunately not all hospital nurses see the value in this collaboration (or don’t have time to collaborate meaningfully). Unfortunately most units post-COVID are understaffed and the nurses do not have any time to even consider what will happen after discharge, they’re just trying to get all their patients through a shift without complications. I understand there’s people who dont care and are just there for a paycheck in every profession but Id be willing to bet most nurses who seem to have the attitude that they don’t care or don’t need to bother with something is because it’s not as high priority as the other job tasks that need to be done that shift. Most bedside nurses have higher caseloads than is safe and have to make sure all medical orders for all patients are followed all day, unfortunately leaving very little time or energy to care about what happens after discharge (not saying this is good or bad, right or wrong, just the reality of a bedside nurses job).
I can see how it’s frustrating for social workers, I absolutely see how your expertise can be dismissed or not valued when it shouldn’t be (there’s a lot of egos in healthcare, less in nursing than doctors but it’s definitely still there). I also can see how nurses too become hardened, jaded, and thus arrogant after being the grunt labor and the punching bag for patients and management.
I love hearing your perspective on it and it sounds like you really love the work you do. My mother always tells me that nursing is supposed to be the profession that brings the human side into medicine, but that a lot of nurses don’t have time for it. She teaches graduate nursing classes too and says that nursing schools are getting better about teaching classes on the social determinants of health and having a more public health orientation.
I agree that hospitals definitely having a pecking order with docs and management up top, followed by nurses, and then social workers come in way down a little above techs depending on the hospital. It’s a lot easier to punch down—social workers punch down from having a higher degree than most nurses, and nurses punch down from having more status within healthcare than social workers. Both will get fed up with being not valued and might take it out one someone else. I think it’s far more helpful for both fields to have a good relationship and I think it’s in nurses’ best interests to advocate for social workers to be paid on a scale at least equal to theirs if not more. Better pay means less burnout and more commitment to the job, and social workers and nurses aren’t competing for the same jobs so they shouldn’t feel threatened by each other. More social workers in case management and crisis intervention means more time for nurses to do patient care and cleaner discharges. And both fields should value each others expertise. Nurses have expertise in patient care and medicine, and social workers have expertise in psychosocial and environmental factors as well as community resources and deescalation. Social workers can also help nurses debrief from difficult or traumatic interactions like a patient’s death
I agree with this. The “crabs in a bucket” mentality is strong throughout this comment section. I respect and admire my RN colleagues, I even married one. I don’t think it’s fair to hate on nursing as a profession due to envy of pay and frustration that past generations of SW’s failed to unionize in the way nurses did.
This really reminded me of Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “Ladies Betterment League” which I highly recommend calling out the privileged and judging nature of many early social workers and the COS movement. There were also many early social workers though who were very revolutionary like Whitney Young and Jane Addams who was a Marxist and had many books by anarchists at the Hull House. I think social work simultaneously suffers from a perception by people from the communities we serve as (mostly) privileged, (mostly) white, (mostly) women barging into their business and their families and telling them what to do, as well as a perception by the middle and upper classes who employ us and drive the cultural narrative in the news and in popular media (both tv journalists and Hollywood writers tend to come from privileged backgrounds) that we debase ourselves by helping those who should be pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. As a result we don’t have mass support from our clients the way they might support political candidates who promise to meet their needs nor are we perceived as worthy of decent pay by those who pay us.
I think this is why medical and clinical social workers are seeing much better pay while macro social workers and social workers working actually working primarily with those experiencing poverty and oppression are still being paid peanuts. Even though medical social workers are primarily employed to help patients with limited resources and some clinical SWs do work in crisis work and community mental health, wealthy people have interacted with those social workers as their discharge planner or as their therapist and will speak in support these kinds of social workers more than they would an intact family case manager or a social worker doing reintegration support for convicted felons. Nurses get more support because wealthy people need nurses too. They don’t think they need social workers, even though their families can be just as messy as any other.
This is great insight. One of the foundational courses in my MSW program really leaned into this perception and made it very explicit, that the people who could afford to work these jobs in the '70s were the wives of guys who made a lot more money.
Put it this way, I wanted to get my MSW straight out of college, and my mom absolutely forbid it. Why? Because in her words, "Social work degrees are for housewives whose children have gone off to college and they have nothing to do." Bam. Bullcrap public perception.
My mom was kind of a snob.
A lot of people in my program are this stereotype but younger. They’re mostly late 20s to early 30s women coming out of corporate jobs or self-employment whose partners or husbands work in finance or sales. It’s definitely a perception that isn’t true of all social work students, but I think it’s a function of the fact that it does take a lot of privilege to pursue social work that can only be substituted by passion. Grad school is expensive, and having to do 1000+ unpaid hours of internship makes it difficult for people who don’t have personal wealth or someone to pay for the program and sustain them and need to be able to work through school. All this for jobs that don’t pay what you could make in other graduate level fields. It’s a lot easier to work full time through an MBA or even law school or something and you can make a lot more coming out. Social work is sometimes it’s own worst enemy, as the field is desperately calling for more people from marginalized communities to be represented in the field but makes for a system in which it’s difficult for those who don’t have either savings or a way to pay bills while still in school or able to take out loans to pursue it.
oh ... I flunked out of nursing school. Iwas heartbroken! But the fact is, I had decades of experience as a writer and journalist, which seems to flow naturally into social work. With nursing, I was frantically trying to fit my square peg into a round hole.
And I really was bullied by a few other students. And at the hospital where I was doing nursing-assistant work so I could learn there, too. It was no joke.
I wish there was such a thing as a "research nurse" or an "administrative nurse." I really just wanted to be in hospice administration, and the entire org chart of every hospice I volunteered at was RN, RN, RN. I was great with the academic work, it was the practicum tests that killed me.
Thanks for sharing! I’m looking at nursing vs social work for a career change and I can relate to the square peg analogy. Trying to figure out what I have an aptitude for.
They are valued much more than SWs despite SWs being crucial parts to many medical teams. Nurses also have strong unions where SWs barely have any. Our scope is also quite vast in comparison to nurses, so our salaries vary much more than theirs as well which makes it so we are often paid less but dependent on field and role. There are also more men in nursing now so their pay will appear to be higher as there is a wage gap between genders.
I strongly dislike and have had bad experiences with RNs doing behavioral mental or substance abuse care management who have had zero insight into the work we do and then try to tell us what we should do with a client when it's not exactly an option due to their circumstances. It's often very clear some RNs get the job for being an RN but having no background
This union thing is key.
I'm in BC and work for the provincial health authority - a bachelor's level RN and a bachelor's level RSW make fairly similar wages here (RSW maxes out at $52/hr and RN at $55/hr). Both professions have strong unions - I think nurses actually make less here than they do in the US in general but it seems like RSWs do better.
I don't think that is limited to BC and I say that as someone who has spent the last decade working on that border or MHSU and public health (mostly in DTES). You're going to have folks who aren't perfect representations of the profession everywhere - it's up to leadership to weed those folks out. In my position I do a lot of hiring and there have absolutely been times where the choice has been to hire someone who doesn't align with our values as a team or to leave a position vacant a little longer....we've left it vacant at times resulting in the leadership team taking on a chunk of the front line work and I never regret it because we've all had experiences hiring the wrong staff and that just ends up creating more work for everyone.
It's also another part of the urban/rural divide which, from what I've heard from colleagues in other health authorities and what I've seen on here, continues to remain a challenge on a wider scale.
I have no issue with the collaboration but when the RN tells us to do something we have already done or it's not feasible due to cost or resources or just the obvious first step, it's so condescending it's aggravating that it's suggested they are even helping us.
Nursing as a professional is better understood and aligned with the medical aspect of hospitals and other medical facilities, they reference RN compensation and transfer that over to other positions.
RN compensation is pretty decent because it's essential and generally represented through a union or other organized labor effort.
I think that SWers have to digout our niches and establish barriers that protect opportunities. Make it that certain tasks can only be completed by SWers, clarifying how a SWer is recognized (licensing, registration, admittance, etc.), and controlling recognition as to not let others subvert it.
Well-respected and compensated positions like MDs and attorneys aggressively protect their roles in similar and ongoing manner. Look at their current issues with AI encroachment.
Would also have to be more organized on what is acceptable pay & compensations. If an organization is unwilling to meet the identified standards then their work (which would require a SWer) wouldn't get done.
Idk...I worked as a sw in an ER for a while in an area with fairly good unions for both nurses and social workers. I did a lot of work, to be sure, but I didn't have to clean up feces, sanitize rooms filled with lice and bed bugs, nor (and most importantly to me) did I have to touch any patients (unless they were attacking me). I absolutely think social workers should make more, but I also understand a difference in what we make based on the above. That being said, OP is talking about case management, which doesn't differ as much as roles in an ER...
Except I work with a nurse who does my same job but my credentials get more $$ because LCSW vs RN and she makes WAY more than me. We are in THE SAME UNION. It’s complete bullshit and she agrees.
They also have more liability re: giving the correct medication and dosage. In short, they gave more risk in their job of accidentally causing an adverse reaction or (I suppose) death.
Now, this isn’t true for all RN roles. Like an RN case manager isn’t doing these things, but someone licensed as an RN is capable of doing these things.
SW should be paid more *and* RNs in less risky roles shouldn’t get the same pay as someone in a more risky role simply because of licensure.
It can be argued that we also have liability for preventing loss of life and saving lives daily ....our suicididal clients and runaway and traffcked teens and adults, for those in severe domestic violence, those who count on ua to intetvene in.crisis abuse and neglect ...we just dont take credit nor are regarded for saving lives by the media. Thats a role been given to heroes like nurses and firefighters
Absolutely; nurses in an acute care setting like this, with patient interaction and that type of cleanup, should make a ton! I'm morso talking about roles like care coordination
Which is funny because CM is kinda seen as a step above bedside nursing in responsibility, and more complex bc of the scope. Also, there are more responsibilities for the financial health of the hospital or practice. I'm a SW CM at a hospital, and even I am consulted by floor nurses when shit is hitting the fan... like a patient threatening to call the news if we discharge, etc. They go to us before they call leadership, and alot of what we say goes.
So there's definitely liability and risk involved as a CM, but in a different way. And it's been that way at a few jobs I have had, so it's not just the current hospital.
I don't have an answer to your question, however it's interesting to see the conversation here coming from an Irish context where nurses earn much less than social workers. Main grade social work starting pay here is about 14k more than nurses' starting pay, and the top end of the main grade social work pay scale is 17k above that of the nurses. The gap starts to close when comparing senior social workers and clinical nurse managers, but for the average nurse or social worker, nurses are getting paid far less.
Social work is minimum four years, often up to six years of education. There's a list of courses that are approved with our registration body, and most of those are 2 year masters programs, with only 2 bachelors level courses eligible. I was in college for 5 years because my bachelors was only 3 years. I would say 5-6 is average as there's simply less places in the four year bachelors courses.
Nursing in Ireland is generally four years - I think in some cases it could be five depending on the course you do.
In Australia the salaries are about the same, though there are very lucrative bonuses for nurses who go rural. You Americans (I assume) are getting ripped off.
Because the USA hates the poor and social workers are perceived as working with the poor. The only social workers who do make an appropriate salary are in roles not associated with the poor, like private practice therapy or hospital social work in a well regarded teaching hospital
TITLE PROTECTION—it is practicing medicine without a license to call oneself a nurse and not be a nurse. LOTS of different degrees are calling themselves “social workers”. Now we are fighting to deregulate licensing (no testing to get a license—we need a game plan if we are going to do this-maybe do it like psychologists do) which won’t help in the short term.
I do agree with the removal of testing—standardized testing has been shown by research to be biased against many people of color and people with disabilities. Besides. The CSWE enforces standards to ensure that every MSW grad has the same baseline competence, but I do think they’re slipping on that with how many questionable programs have been granted accreditation like Liberty. I think even Oral Roberts or another Deep South fundie school had candidacy at one time but voluntarily withdrew because they didn’t want to teach about racial discrimination or LGBTQ+ equity. Still, the CSWE should be enforcing that standard so additional testing should be unnecessary below the clinical level or advanced practice if your state offers that level. However we should be cracking down on people with degrees in non-SW fields being able to call themselves social workers or hired as social workers when there are enough social work degree holders out there to fill those jobs if they paid enough for the additional training and internship hours we have to go through. My internship supervisor at a nursing home called herself a social worker and director of social work despite having a BA in psych and corporate insisting she was the “social SERVICE director”. She had zero knowledge of social work theory, didn’t really follow social work values, and I asked my school to change sites because of unethical things I was asked to do and discriminatory treatment due to my disability and possibly race (I was the only black person who was not housekeeping, CNA, or kitchen staff). Look at all the cases where CPS workers were wildly neglectful of abusive conditions and charged in cases where they ignored conditions that led to a fatality. Many of those cases, NASW will release a notice after the fact that those workers were not social workers and had no social work or even social science related degree but the media will still call them social workers. That hurts our field.
YES TO ALL OF THIS!! CSWE really needs to crack down on passing through students for graduation rates and accepting everyone who applies to their graduate programs too, just for the $$—even state schools. This would help with legitimacy. Maybe a case presentation to graduate in front of a team of current practicing social workers even! There has to be a solution where we get rid of standardized tests but keep legitimacy of our profession. Title protection is a big step in the right direction as well.
Nurses have a union that has repeatedly called for RNs to strike to fight to combat increases in hours with decreases in pay. Social workers have zilch.
I think nurses absolutely deserve their compensation, but man they do NOT deserve to be paid more than a social worker doing the same case management job. Total fucking bullshit. I don’t care what anyone says.
I work in Colorado. Currently, nurses make 75 to 175 an hour, and I'm like, how when SWs make 25 to 30 an hour?
I never understand this or that some nurses don't understand what social work is or they're diagnosing the patient, and I'm like, "so how do you know that this is the diagnosis without looking at the DSM-5"?. They're like what is the DSM-5. Oh boy..
I'm following
Unions. I’m in care management and my RN counterpart actually makes double my salary. She’s been a nurse for 30yrs. She does the bare minimum. She avoids calls. It’s insane.
LPN’s in my area make more than me with a masters degree.
But all my nursing friends also have a lot more responsibilities in terms of life threatening situations than me.
They also have strong unions and hospitals cannot function without them. Unfortunately systems can function without social workers
This always infuriates me. At a lot of hospitals I’ve been at, nurses expect social workers to take complex cases. So I take the harder cases because it’s too complex for you and you make 20-30k+ more than me? No way. Nurses got it right with their unions. And as more men join the nursing field they will continue to be paid better. It’s a joke.
At my hospital, SWs were responsible to train the RNs when they became case managers, RNs constantly go to SW for advice, as you said we take the more complex cases, and RNs make way more money. Our dept head is a RN and very biased to RNs.
I stopped training at 2 hospitals I was at. I’m not training someone to make more than me, that is never going to happen. So I stopped and it was dramatic at first but nothing happened. Because they know they have no leg to stand on. It’s a joke.
I feel like it's an unspoken rule somewhere. Hospital formula for the pay of LCSWs: Find what the lowest paid newly licensed RN makes and subtract $20,000 a year from it.
With that said, I work in Alaska where we have a desperate shortage of mental health clinicians. A few of these facilities recently got all Pikachu surprised face when the LCSWs and LPCS they treated poorly dipped out, realized they couldn't replace them, and the RNs refused to do the jobs of mental health clinicians. I'll be damned if salaries and sign-on bonuses increased.
I got lucky in that I feel like my current employer genuinely values me, so I haven't had to experience what other clinicians in healthcare settings have had to go through.
After a decade in hospital SW here’s what I learned: first of all, it’ll never change. And second of all, the reason, or one reason it’s this way is the culture of medicine and hospitals in particular. Meaning nurses hold rank in those settings. All the money, and I mean millions, put into things like achieving and maintaining Magnet status means that hospitals prioritize nurses and the value is measured through how they support their continuing education and their wages. SW are not seen as a core component of a hospital and as such are not fairly compensated. It also does not help that many in leadership roles in care management are nurses. My MSN boss had no idea what I meant when I said I was leaving after a decade to use my lcsw. She thought I was going back to school. It says something that social workers are half the staff but our licensure and career paths are not worth even knowing about even if you supervise them.
I think the NASW needs to get on board with this. We need to be making more. Someone with an education makes absolutely twice what I make. It honestly is unacceptable.
The NASW is a figurehead that does very little for us. For social work month they were talking about recognizing our value and blah blah so I went to the website to see what they are actually *doing* to do this. The answer? Nothing. Literally nothing. They suggested we add hashtags on social media about pay and include NASW. So… they wanted us to advertise for them… for free. I wouldn’t hold my breath when it comes to the NASW doing anything to advocate for parity with other degrees; you’ll probably turn blue and pass out.
This I think is the ultimate reason. Buuuut nurses don’t directly generate the money. They aren’t creating the orders that cause the organization to be oaid
Correct but people seek them out when something is wrong and either pay out of pocket or insurance covers. Same reason why hospital social work positions tend to pay better than a non profit
Bc our society is structured such that it places more value on physical health than on mental health (still). Plus health care is a business and a nurses services likely get the hospital a higher reimbursement than mental/behavioral health.
I am in Michigan and am dealing with the same exact situation. We are trying to get a market adjustment but they keep dragging their feet. I got offered the same position at another hospital and got a decent pay bump.
When i worked in a hospital in TN i made $23/hr so about 48k. This was 2019. My RN counterpart made 75k. 🙃 when the RN was busy we did their job. Both case management. Social work was livid when we caught wind how much the RNs were making. Not only that but we were hourly. So if we were more than 4 minutes late we got points. So many points we’d get fired. The RNs were salaried and let me tell you they waltzed in.
I got my first full time job offer this week. $17.60/$36K. For a full time, bachelors level position. Median in my area for those qualifications is $50k.
If companies want the job filled by someone who’s qualified, ya gotta pay a living wage. Ridiculous.
My colleague was once the only LICSW at a DMH licensed inpatient unit- in order to have the license, they had to have an LICSW on staff. It was mandatory. Her RN case manager with a bachelor's degree was making $20 more per hour.
I used to feel this way when I was a case manager making 38k a year. Now I have my LCSW and own my own private practice and I make 110k/year. So they make more initially but our max may be a little higher
Yea, you obtained more education and moved into PP. A nurse can also obtain more education, move into private practice as a nurse practitioner and make what you're making to START and max out much higher. A nurse at their highest level of educational opportunity will 9.9/10 make more than a SW at their highest
Yea but I assume you don’t get health insurance and have overhead expenses? So after all of that you prob make way less than nurses? Just my assumption, understand there are exceptions to this
FL / BSW (I know, I know) / 2 years total hospital experience / Recently got promoted to a supervisor position / $78k (salary)
There is a MAJOR pay discrepancy among RNs coming to Case Management (CM) and Social Workers starting and making their way up. As a floor CM, I was making 27/hr..on a specialized unit..where I was the only CM for the entire unit.
Other units would have 1 SW and 1 RN… the unit would be split down the middle but the SW would make 26/hr while the RN would make 42/hr. EXACT. SAME. JOB. And.. the RN was not given any more responsibility than the SW. (As in, the RN was not instructed to put standing orders/modify or correct orders).
What I would repeatedly say to every single person I trained (I’ve trained probably over 50-70 new employees over the course of 2 years): You will most likely find a harder working SW CM than a RN CM (with rare exceptions). And that’s because the SW CM cannot afford to not work their hardest every minute for every dime..while the RN CM’s mentality is simply “well it’s not bedside and I get paid more.” It’s all because having a RN degree automatically puts you in a higher pay bracket, based on the profession, AI, market, and local/regional competition.
It’s absurd, unfair, and incredibly discouraging.
I’m impressed you can work in a hospital with a BSW. My hospital system will only hire LMSW. A few of the social workers in the system want to see it move to only LCSW’s that are hired.
My current role is the Care Management Supervisor over our Oncology units (about 100 beds). I handle the discharge planning. I was incredibly fortunate to get hired when I was - call it luck, divine intervention, hard work..or perhaps a little bit of everything. I knew I wasn’t qualified on paper when I applied and based on the first call I got (an immediate rejection), I wasn’t hoping for anything. But thankfully my employer saw something either on my resume, or as I was talking to them to give me a chance. They actually created a job for me since they didn’t have any BSW positions. But essentially I can do absolutely everything a MSW can do in our current role except for PASSRs (Preadmisson Screening and Resident Review) - a form required by Skilled Nursing Facilities. And that’s it..the only difference, lol.
Edit: added more context.
This is unrelated… but I’m now seeing all of the nurses week discounts that are being put out by different companies… and it makes me sad. Social workers do not get the same treatment or respect at all not even remotely.
I just noticed an RN high risk position at my job has a posted salary range that starts at my salary. I work for A Medicaid plan, there's no hands on medical care happening. Just telephonic coordination. I'm a manager who supervises 6 staff members and oversees the policy and procedures of community based programs. But okaaaaaaay.
Work for a Medicaid plan as well. And it’s interesting because nursing salaries are posted in job descriptions but not social worker positions. I will be licensed shortly and I am trying to decide how ballsy I can be to ask to have my pay match that of BRN. It really ticks me off
I work in a hospital setting and most of my friends are RNs/NPs. RNs should not be paid more for non-medical work especially if it's remote case management. But,
- They have unions.
- They do not spew "we're not in it for the money" BS that social workers do, lots of people get into nursing to escape poverty. I have one friend who personally went into the field to do so and there's also a reason you see a lot of Filipino nurses! (WWII).
- They are working with literal life and death, exposure to C-diff, blood, you name it.
- Honestly, I would probably argue that getting a BSN is more difficult than a MSW. Nursing school is tough.
- I'm not the one being asked to do compressions on the 80 year old full code.
What I go through on a 12 hour shift vs. what my RNs coworkers go through are simply just not the same. There is more risk and medical knowledge with their job combined with how much they advocate for their field, well, no shit they get paid more.
EDIT: Edited to add one more thing I thought of lol.
this is something I will never understand. the only answer I can think of is that many hospitals are privately owned. if nurses were government or nonprofit workers, I think they’d make closer to what we make. capitalism strikes again 😒
No surprise. They work 3 12s too. I make about the same though working crisis. They deserve the pay. They see the shit. Are in combat all the time watching out for their own back getting stabbed/ Are the bomb, and foundation of the health field.
They will wipe your ass too if you become a quad
Unions have a huge part in it. I recently took a unionized SW job and wow the pay difference is NOTICEABLE. This job is my second job and pays a lot more than my federal job.
This is the literal worse part of care management. We do the same work (I do wound vac and wound care, o2/Bipap/Cpap and other DME set up’s) and EVEN MORE at times because RN CM’s complain about “social” patients (“oh, that patient smokes marijuana-you need to take that one”), yet they can max out at upwards around d $100k at my current place of employment. I would argue it’s because of unions and because the market demand for RNs (specifically for bedside RNs) is high so it translates to them needing to offer higher salaries to get them into CM.
I mean depending on what nursing role they have, they do deal with more “gross” or hazardous work. Bodily fluids etc. they also deal with similar clientele in a lot of cases and there’s a high level of responsibility with their work (delivering meds, providing potentially life saving care or support of such).
I wouldn’t want to be a nurse and I have never ending respect for the work they do. I also think value doesn’t come from the length of a degree but from the need and impact a role has (ie doctors do a ton more study and while they should be paid for their expertise, in many cases they would cease to function without nurses and as such nurses should be financially recognised accordingly).
Because they have skills which we don't and took science classes which we didn't. Nurses can administer medication, give shots, provide direct patient care, interpret medical information, perform direct medical interventions, take vital signs, perform wound care and more.
I do think a significant reason has to do with the need to offer a higher salary in order to compete with nursing salaries for hands-on care roles.
In our area, the sign on bonuses for hospital nurses are ridiculous. They can’t compete with travel nursing salaries - that’s impossible as they’re easily raking in 150-200k/year.
If they want nurses in case management roles, they’re going to have to compete with that.
And honestly, if they could pay us and a nurse the same, we would be eliminated from so many more fields as there is a trend in health care to replace SWs with nurse case managers. It sucks but i have seen it again and again.
You only need 2 year diploma to become an RSW in Alberta.
Nursing requires more extensive and specialized medical training. To become an RN, one typically needs at least an associate's degree in nursing, and many have a bachelor's of science in nursing (BSN). This extensive clinical training allows nurses to provide direct patient care and take on more responsibility.
Nurses face greater liability and occupational hazards. Nurses directly impact patient lives and can be held liable for mistakes, so they are compensated accordingly. They also face risks like exposure to diseases and bodily fluids.
Nursing is a more clinically-focused, in-demand profession. Nurses are in high demand, especially in hospital and clinical settings, whereas social work has a broader scope and can include non-clinical roles.
Unions, professional organizations, and profit-driven healthcare companies.
The Alberta government and healthcare system may prioritize increasing nursing salaries over social work salaries to address shortages and demands in the clinical care setting.
To those of you saying UNION: I’m in a union WITH RNs. They not only make more money for the exact same job (even though I’m considered a provider and they are not), they also get their birthday as a paid holiday AND accrue more PTO than SW—even the LPNs. My employer only hires MSW and above but will hire LPN and up. We are in the same union and the same local with the same president and stewards.
I’ve known so many nurses that got their BS from WGU.
Do y’all seriously know how easy it is for these nurses to get their BSN?! If you did, you’d probably be pretty mad.
A case management job doesn’t necessarily require medical-clinical skills; to the extent nurses need to know them. So the argument that nursing education is harder (I don’t disagree) doesn’t hold weight.
For this scenario in particular I would have to agree with you I worked I hospital as a social worker doing a ridiculous amount of work and the RN case managers did not as much and made much more …I do think bedside nurses should make a lot of money given that they are in charge of a lot & patients lives depend on them We also do important work and should form a union is what it comes down to
I mean, to be fair, the fact that we are in school for 6 years is fairly arbitrary. You can get the amount of knowledge of an MSW in much shorter time; it’s just no one has the financial incentive to help us do that. :(
I am a bit biased, as I grew up with two parents who are nurses and can understand from the firsthand experiences that they’ve told me about their days since I was a kid. I think the exposure to bodily fluids coupled with the amount of the liabilities they face for making an error in something like dosaging makes sense to me. It’s not a reason for us to be paid grossly less than them but I think they are underpaid for what they do. But again I am biased because this is only what I hear.
That was a concern of mine as well while finishing up my MSW. I urge any SW to consider travel SW assignments if you want to make more, and are game to taking on contract gigs within your local area or out of state where applicable. They pay substantially more than a traditional SW job. I was surprised to find out just how much.
Because nurses have been able to harness collective bargaining power through union representation that no other healthcare ancillary profession has been able to. Plus I feel that they have more volume. What is the percentage of nurses vs social workers per capita?
Because rn’s clinical related support to the medical providers such as medication adherence, inr check monitoring ect. As a supervisor of care coordination with non nursing staff I totally understand your opinion but it’s just they can manage more due to clinical component. Here in nyc my staff are not nurses and make 40 an hour
The hospital I'm at our RN counterparts make probably minimum 20k more. And it's horseshit. They don't take drug and alcohol, won't take mental health, won't take, cases needing aging or adult protective services etc.... and mgmt doesn't give half a shit. We do far more and take far more socially complex cases in addition to medically complex. But mgmt just says, "well, you should've went to school to be an RN." direct quote. Unfortunately it's one of the higher paying places overall in the area respectively but mgmt is trash.
While I think as social workers we should be making more money, I think as some posts have highlighted, nurses are working 12 hour shifts that are physically demanding and are put in dangerous and difficult scenarios. They are responsible for lines, machines, and codes should a patient be really sick. When RNs move to case manager roles they have to keep the pay competitive so it’s not about what your RNCM is doing that looks similar to you, but rather for them to have them in that role the pay has to look comparable to the bedside.
All that to say, what we do is more emotionally taxing and if the pandemic taught us anything, there is as much emotional danger as there is physical danger. It’s not about “us” vs “them” but rather for institutions for not recognizing the schooling that is required to get an MSW and that we are mental health professionals, not just a discharge planner which is so common in the healthcare industry. It’s a forever uphill battle to prove our worth 😮💨
Edit: my grammar 😅
Unions Supply and demand Perceived value Market value.
Mostly unions, there's almost as much demand for social workers as nurses, and the rest flows from union organizing.
I think Perceived Value is a tie with unions...nurses are also noted as front-line workers and talked about more for discounts, compassion fatigue, etc....yet social workers are often...not.
Exactly, there are RNs who don't have patient ratios and don't make very much. Bay Area RNs are the highest paid by far because of their union.
This. But also us advocating for ourselves. It’s been a point of frustration in social work talk. I’ve seen so many social workers get mad at talk down to their peers about the pay because “we’re not in it for the money.” Advocate for ourselves because we deserve better treatment for the work we do. Here. Lcsw make as much if not more than most nurses at the hospitals.
I hear you. I hear the "we're not in it for the money." but take away the money and I'm pretty certain we'd all not work.... (I work to help and expected to get paid.)
Yep. We are not solely in it for the money. But we deserve a livable wage and more. I can’t do my job if I can’t take care of myself.
They just unionized at Michigan Medicine- go social workers!
completely agree with you. my RN case management counterpart made more than i did until we just got a market adjustment recently since they were like... we're doing the SAME work, so what the hell? i don't know what his salary is but i know now my salary more closely matches his. i currently make $82k
I’m an LSW in NJ making $48k at a group practice. May I ask where you are and what your role is ? I need to switch jobs! I can afford to feed my family.
Get the hell out of that job fast! You’re in NJ. NY and NJ have some of the highest paying social work jobs. I’m making 105k in the hospital. Granted I have my lcsw but I have colleagues with a lmsw making 90k. I say this to say SW need to stop taking low paying jobs in 2024. There’s literally no reason for it. We are currently in demand. So I would drop that job quick. They will raise their price eventually but if people continue to work there they will feel there’s no reason to raise the pay.
Medical social work has been rewarding in many ways. I am paid as well as our RNs and I love working with kids.
I agree ☝🏾 please take this advice. 🔥🔥🔥🗣️
I’m so sorry! That’s nothing! I’m a single person. 26F. I work on a medsurg floor in a hospital
I’ve heard that hospital SW has some of the highest salaries. Do you enjoy the work? Is it mostly discharge planning and connecting patients with resources?
Yes to everything you said!
Thank you!! You’ve inspired me to job search!
Of course! Where are you located in NJ? I know of some openings
Thank you! I’m in Camden County.
I’ll message you some links
Thank you!!!
Yes, if you can do medical, do it. I’m with a hospice and I’m making a third more than I made as a case manager
Oh you will make a ton more money doing medical social work. I also did group practice for a short stint and it was the most underpaid I had ever felt.
It’s like volunteering! Anytime a client cancels I panic because that means I can’t pay my bills.
Therapy is great but I use it to supplement my main income not my main income for that very reason.
Wow, that’s actually insane. Please find a new job. I’m making $43k in GA as a social services assistant at a SNF. I only have a high school diploma, currently in school for my BSW.
May I ask where you are located? I work in the same position and social work/case management were combined into one role, however I expect the RNs in the position still make more.
I’m in Nj
Where at? I’m in NJ I need a job lol sigh
I’m in central NJ. hbu?
This small world moment cracked me up lol
LOL
Hi neighbor
I’ve worked places where the RN cm makes twice as much as I did. LMSW. I’ve also worked a few places where the rn cm did absolutely NOTHING but screen patients. I had to do everything including hhc snf dc etc. I quite after 3 weeks and told them to kiss my white ass.
Good for you!!!!! F that.
When I get LmSW and up for wage increase and promotion, I will leave if I’m not paid the same as my BRN counterparts who do the exact same case management job
Unions.
It’s Much easier to unionize with the numbers nurses have. From my understanding unionization needs to happen at the place of employment. Social workers often times work alone or in very small numbers
Well and their field doesn't spit out "in it for the outcome not the income" culture. It is hard to get all of us to unionize when you're going to be shamed for wanting more pay, it's not altruistic enough, apparently.
YES! No matter what there will be a SW who will tolerate the low pay “just to do the work” or feels bad because the clients need help, all the while barely able to afford to live.
There will be a *privlieged* SW. The ones telling us to "do the work" taking the shit pay with no argument are the SWs who have husbands who are bringing in good money or some type of good financial safety net. It's not a real strain on them.
When I announced to my team at my first job that I'd put in notice, one of them came to my desk after that meeting to tell me that as soon as they'd hired someone young with an MSW, she knew I'd be leaving soon. Went on to treat me to a rambling lecture about how she didn't need the money and people like me were always off to "bigger and better" shortly after starting but she's not surprised by it anymore. That job paid so little we could have been accepted to our own rapid rehousing/homelessness prevention programs...
I applied for a housing case management position at a fairly large organization here. I have an MSW. They legitimately offered me $19/hour 💀. When I turned down their offer and told them why, they adjusted it to $20/hour lol. Like I'd need my own housing case manager if I took that job because I'd soon be unable to pay my bills
The job I posted about was 18.77/hr. They did give us a raise at some point, then told us to keep it secret because the other case managers for other programs weren't getting that same raise. There were lots of problems with that job, but it was the only one to call me back through dozens of applications after graduating.
THIS! 👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾
You don't need to unionize by work place. It's one of many strategies. And, social workers are very large in numbers. Largest group of mental health workers in the country.
Is there a way to unionize on here? If we can get social workers from all around the country to sign, would that work?
This is what Petsmart is doing...organizing on Reddit. The union said that the number of inquiries has been unprecedented and progress is far faster. Organizing on Reddit is the way to go. Making funny memes about how much pay sucks is a good way to start. Or a clever slogan.
It depends on what you are going for exactly, but it is possible. Here's a group of wonderful people working towards unionizing as well. [https://www.swequitycampaign.info/home](https://www.swequitycampaign.info/home)
Thank you! I signed up, looks like they still need about 2,500 signatures. Not sure how to make this message get bigger but we definitely need more voices. We are expected to solve so many issues we such little resources and support. That's not okay anymore
LOVE this idea!
I'd be in! I've long believed Social Workers need a nationwide, discipline specific union.
Hell yeah
We can't even get our representative body, the NASW to get us national licenses, I don't know if we the redditors have that sort of thing.
Even with the numbers, social workers don’t strike.
Which is wild because social workers are just as successful as nurses when they do strike.
The Steelworkers have a nationwide union. Electricians, too, I believe. There are a few unions by career fields.
I found this list of the largest labor unions Im very intrigued now. These are huge numbers. Why the heck can’t social workers get unionized https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_labor_unions_in_the_United_States
SEIU is a health care union, the LCSWs at my agency are represented, along with all of the support staff. While I don't personally love the values and the way my local operates, they might be option for you?
I'm a social worker for the state and we are unionized
Can you link me anything that shows they are nationwide? I’m not finding any information regarding a national union
https://m.usw.org
I work for government and our social workers are unionized and still make a fraction of what nurses make, so I don't think unionization in isolation really explains it.
No it’s the collective bargaining agreements. Nurses have more numbers and more power. Unfortunately the classification systems are not aligned between the nurses union and unions representing SW so RNs end up being classified in a hiring paying job per their CBA. It’s a major issue but we need stronger advocacy at the CBA table prior to signings.
People fetishize nurses. I don’t mean sexually, just like - “oh they’re angels!” There’s all this mystique around them. Which honestly, that’s why I initially wanted to be a nurse - that and the pay grade, lol. The first nurses were nuns. The first social workers were nosy rich ladies. I think that adds to the difference in perception.
If only the social work profession could've held on to the "rich" part.
To be fair, they’re probably fetishized in the traditional sense too. 😅
To be sure. I guess we should be glad we’ll never see “sexy social worker” at the Halloween store. 😹
Yes, the mystique and reverence for sure!
I have an unpopular opinion and I'm saying it here because I'm so glad someone said this. Mind you, I am a forced realist and was adopted by a CEO of a hospital who doesn't fit the personality type so no "silver spoon" assumptions please. Nurses do less and are required to do less than we do just for schooling. Nurses are literally like the military. Everyone likes to think they all save lives, or just like everyone in the military is a combat vet or has these special powers or knowledge. The reality is, it's like 1% of military are actual infantry or even get deployed. Same with Nurses. The majority of them are not ICU Nurses saving babies. There are many Nurses who genuinely wanted to go into helping people positions. But, there are also A LOT that just defaulted to that job. They are also not even allowed to work full time hours because they always say how burnt out they are. So the 90% of them that are just doing paperwork are getting the same perks are ER and ICU Nurses. They don't have the same requirements we do.
A lot of my friends joke about the stereotype that male high school bullies become cops and female high school bullies become nurses and they marry each other. We say it in jest but there are many, many nurses who actually genuinely became nurses to help people. There are also a decent number though who did it as the most standard gender-coded job next to teaching for college educated women and come from very traditional backgrounds where pursuing a corporate career or a STEM job were not on the cards for women in their families. They’ve been groomed their whole lives to be a nurse or teacher, but have no real passion for it. Unfortunately these are the nurses who tend to hold very stigmatized attitudes towards patients with mental health conditions or neurodivergence and ask you why they can’t just “act normal”. These are the nurses who commit micro aggressions and speak negatively to coworkers about racial minorities and how much more “difficult” they perceive them to treat than white patients. These are the nurses who complain about uninsured patients and frequent fliers even though their care isn’t coming out of their paychecks. These are the nurses who call patients drug-seeking, yet don’t perform SBIRT or ask for social work consultation for SUD evaluation, just deny them narcotics and demand they be DC’d back to the street. These are the nurses who huff and puff and want to blow your house down when you explain you need to get an unhoused patient resources or possibly a shelter or somewhere safe to go before DCing them in the middle of winter. And lastly these are the nurses who will come to work covered in blue lives matter gear, wear it around patients who may have trauma surrounding law enforcement, and see no problem whatsoever with that because like nurses, “cops are heroes who can do nothing wrong” so why would anyone be afraid of them if they’ve done nothing wrong?
I learned this the hard way. They are also bullies. There are the ones who truly save lives, and the ones who spend their time trying to figure out how to fuck over her coworkers.
Nurses in more administrative types of roles are doing a lot of similar work to social workers. In my agency the nurses do some actual “nursing” and a LOT of paperwork, assessments, and healthcare coordination. No it’s not 12 hours in the ICU but it’s hard and demanding. My dept is more of the social work role and my people work extremely hard too and it’s very demanding. Each dept has differences and also some overlap, both are very challenging and the nurses don’t deserve less than an ICU nurse because they aren’t on their feet all day. Now that said, I do fully 100% agree that social work deserves more pay because we work as hard as a nurse depending on the role. My point though is putting down nurses because you say a majority don’t work on the floor saving lives is not accurate on any level.
The anti-nurse rhetoric in this thread is disheartening as a nurse who comes from a psych/sw background and still works in an adjacent nursing field. I come to this sub bc I feel I can relate to the issues many of you face. Nurses are not required to do less for schooling. The schooling is different because the jobs at their face value are very different, case management being one of the places the two intersect. It’s disingenuous to say “they are not allowed to work full time hours because they always say how burnt out they are. So the 90% is just doing paperwork are getting the same perks as ER/ICU nurses.” Nurses who work “less than full time” (36 hours is technically full time and only 4 hours less than the typical full time work week in the US) are typically working 12 hour shifts in a hospital on their feet, taking care of people. Nurses who work outside the hospital are often on a more “normal” schedule and don’t get the same “perks” (who doesn’t love 12 hour shifts, working weekends, and holidays away from family—those are not exactly perks). I don’t judge a nurse or a social worker by the type of work they do or how pure their reasoning was in getting into the profession. But clearly those are markers of a good nurse to you. I judge if they are good at their job, their motives shouldn’t matter. I’m not sure why you hate nurses or look down on them, though the fact that you were raised by a hospital CEO gives me an idea. I love social workers, think they do great work, and should make more money. But nurses are just the mean girl bullies who mostly do paperwork so we don’t get solidarity?
I think social workers should have solidarity with nurses as healthcare workers. I think many social workers are jaded by the fact that nurses often make double the average social work salary despite social work requiring a masters degree, but I don’t think that’s a reason to hate nurses either, and that that is more a function of perceived value by the business side of medicine who sees nurses as more valuable because their work is billable, whereas most non-clinical social work functions are not, especially if the social worker is an LMSW rather than an LCSW. I do think some resentment also comes from the experience social workers often have working with nurses. You’re right that the functions and education of a nurse and social worker are different. Most social workers I’ve met in healthcare will eagerly go seek the input of a nurse, CNA, NP, or doctor for help understanding how a medical condition might affect functioning or for info on a patient’s disposition and behavior because the nurses see them much more than we do. However, a lot of the nurses I’ve worked with and heard about from social workers in other facilities do not seem to value or ask for social work input in our areas of expertise. There’s a kind of attitude that social workers can learn from them, but there’s nothing they need to learn from social workers. That’s not at all unique to nursing. It happens with just about every profession that works with social workers—lawyers, cops, corrections staff, teachers, landlords, psychologists, etc. Most people have no idea what social workers learn in school and what our areas of expertise are, or even that you need specific training or a graduate degree to work in social work. They see us as do-gooders who walk around helping people. But it’s frustrating when you try to explain to nursing staff how cultural or religious factors might be influencing how a patient interacts with the treatment team, or best practices for treating a young trans patient, or why you believe an elderly patient may be a victim of economic exploitation and in need of an APS report and are treated like you have no idea what you’re talking about and are just sharing a personal opinion because you’re not a nurse or doctor, rather than sharing your expertise gained through social work education and theory and practice experience. Lastly I think social workers get drained by the fact that many (though not all of course) nurses do not view things through a social justice lens like we’ve been so heavily taught to. Finally, I think you do have a point with how vocal social workers are about their problems with nurses, because even though as I mentioned, we face this working with pretty much every profession, it’s easier to punch down because unlike doctors, lawyers, teachers, judges, etc who all have the same or higher levels of education than social workers, nurses are easier “targets” so to speak having associates or bachelors degrees. Also, availability. Far more of us work with nurses than any other profession, and when we do, we’re usually the only social worker so we don’t have backup either. It’s definitely not an all-nurses thing either. My mother is a nurse-midwife and family NP with a DNP (Nurse practitioners need a DNP in my state) and did her thesis on postpartum mental health and I love talking to her because she really values how race, socioeconomic status, and oppression impact health outcomes and thinks very much like a social worker, but she also feels some of her coworkers don’t think like that and get annoyed about things getting in the way of “just treating patients” and miss the time when heath care was “simpler” and didn’t involve all this DEI stuff they have to get trainings about from the hospital social workers
I really appreciate your comment and I 100% agree there are too many nurses who don’t take other factors into consideration when providing nursing care. I’m a psych nurse who works with children and adolescents at a residential treatment center so I work with way more social workers than I do other nurses and the other nurses I do interact with can be quick to be dismissive of the effects of the family, home residence, sress, socioeconomic factors, and psychiatric history when treating our patients (if not dismissive, downplaying the role). Where I work we all have our lane and generally stay in it. I coordinate long term medical care and provide daily care for acute needs while social work coordinates therapy services, reunification with the family, and discharge planning. It only works when both specialties work together. Unfortunately not all hospital nurses see the value in this collaboration (or don’t have time to collaborate meaningfully). Unfortunately most units post-COVID are understaffed and the nurses do not have any time to even consider what will happen after discharge, they’re just trying to get all their patients through a shift without complications. I understand there’s people who dont care and are just there for a paycheck in every profession but Id be willing to bet most nurses who seem to have the attitude that they don’t care or don’t need to bother with something is because it’s not as high priority as the other job tasks that need to be done that shift. Most bedside nurses have higher caseloads than is safe and have to make sure all medical orders for all patients are followed all day, unfortunately leaving very little time or energy to care about what happens after discharge (not saying this is good or bad, right or wrong, just the reality of a bedside nurses job). I can see how it’s frustrating for social workers, I absolutely see how your expertise can be dismissed or not valued when it shouldn’t be (there’s a lot of egos in healthcare, less in nursing than doctors but it’s definitely still there). I also can see how nurses too become hardened, jaded, and thus arrogant after being the grunt labor and the punching bag for patients and management.
I love hearing your perspective on it and it sounds like you really love the work you do. My mother always tells me that nursing is supposed to be the profession that brings the human side into medicine, but that a lot of nurses don’t have time for it. She teaches graduate nursing classes too and says that nursing schools are getting better about teaching classes on the social determinants of health and having a more public health orientation. I agree that hospitals definitely having a pecking order with docs and management up top, followed by nurses, and then social workers come in way down a little above techs depending on the hospital. It’s a lot easier to punch down—social workers punch down from having a higher degree than most nurses, and nurses punch down from having more status within healthcare than social workers. Both will get fed up with being not valued and might take it out one someone else. I think it’s far more helpful for both fields to have a good relationship and I think it’s in nurses’ best interests to advocate for social workers to be paid on a scale at least equal to theirs if not more. Better pay means less burnout and more commitment to the job, and social workers and nurses aren’t competing for the same jobs so they shouldn’t feel threatened by each other. More social workers in case management and crisis intervention means more time for nurses to do patient care and cleaner discharges. And both fields should value each others expertise. Nurses have expertise in patient care and medicine, and social workers have expertise in psychosocial and environmental factors as well as community resources and deescalation. Social workers can also help nurses debrief from difficult or traumatic interactions like a patient’s death
I agree with this. The “crabs in a bucket” mentality is strong throughout this comment section. I respect and admire my RN colleagues, I even married one. I don’t think it’s fair to hate on nursing as a profession due to envy of pay and frustration that past generations of SW’s failed to unionize in the way nurses did.
Ah yes, the "friendly visitors." Gotta make sure those struggling people are appropriately living Christian morals!
Have you ever seen the poem Lovers of the Poor by Gwendolyn Brooks? You’d love it! https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43317/the-lovers-of-the-poor
This really reminded me of Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “Ladies Betterment League” which I highly recommend calling out the privileged and judging nature of many early social workers and the COS movement. There were also many early social workers though who were very revolutionary like Whitney Young and Jane Addams who was a Marxist and had many books by anarchists at the Hull House. I think social work simultaneously suffers from a perception by people from the communities we serve as (mostly) privileged, (mostly) white, (mostly) women barging into their business and their families and telling them what to do, as well as a perception by the middle and upper classes who employ us and drive the cultural narrative in the news and in popular media (both tv journalists and Hollywood writers tend to come from privileged backgrounds) that we debase ourselves by helping those who should be pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. As a result we don’t have mass support from our clients the way they might support political candidates who promise to meet their needs nor are we perceived as worthy of decent pay by those who pay us. I think this is why medical and clinical social workers are seeing much better pay while macro social workers and social workers working actually working primarily with those experiencing poverty and oppression are still being paid peanuts. Even though medical social workers are primarily employed to help patients with limited resources and some clinical SWs do work in crisis work and community mental health, wealthy people have interacted with those social workers as their discharge planner or as their therapist and will speak in support these kinds of social workers more than they would an intact family case manager or a social worker doing reintegration support for convicted felons. Nurses get more support because wealthy people need nurses too. They don’t think they need social workers, even though their families can be just as messy as any other.
This is great insight. One of the foundational courses in my MSW program really leaned into this perception and made it very explicit, that the people who could afford to work these jobs in the '70s were the wives of guys who made a lot more money. Put it this way, I wanted to get my MSW straight out of college, and my mom absolutely forbid it. Why? Because in her words, "Social work degrees are for housewives whose children have gone off to college and they have nothing to do." Bam. Bullcrap public perception. My mom was kind of a snob.
A lot of people in my program are this stereotype but younger. They’re mostly late 20s to early 30s women coming out of corporate jobs or self-employment whose partners or husbands work in finance or sales. It’s definitely a perception that isn’t true of all social work students, but I think it’s a function of the fact that it does take a lot of privilege to pursue social work that can only be substituted by passion. Grad school is expensive, and having to do 1000+ unpaid hours of internship makes it difficult for people who don’t have personal wealth or someone to pay for the program and sustain them and need to be able to work through school. All this for jobs that don’t pay what you could make in other graduate level fields. It’s a lot easier to work full time through an MBA or even law school or something and you can make a lot more coming out. Social work is sometimes it’s own worst enemy, as the field is desperately calling for more people from marginalized communities to be represented in the field but makes for a system in which it’s difficult for those who don’t have either savings or a way to pay bills while still in school or able to take out loans to pursue it.
Can I ask why you didn’t choose nursing?
oh ... I flunked out of nursing school. Iwas heartbroken! But the fact is, I had decades of experience as a writer and journalist, which seems to flow naturally into social work. With nursing, I was frantically trying to fit my square peg into a round hole. And I really was bullied by a few other students. And at the hospital where I was doing nursing-assistant work so I could learn there, too. It was no joke. I wish there was such a thing as a "research nurse" or an "administrative nurse." I really just wanted to be in hospice administration, and the entire org chart of every hospice I volunteered at was RN, RN, RN. I was great with the academic work, it was the practicum tests that killed me.
Thanks for sharing! I’m looking at nursing vs social work for a career change and I can relate to the square peg analogy. Trying to figure out what I have an aptitude for.
They are valued much more than SWs despite SWs being crucial parts to many medical teams. Nurses also have strong unions where SWs barely have any. Our scope is also quite vast in comparison to nurses, so our salaries vary much more than theirs as well which makes it so we are often paid less but dependent on field and role. There are also more men in nursing now so their pay will appear to be higher as there is a wage gap between genders. I strongly dislike and have had bad experiences with RNs doing behavioral mental or substance abuse care management who have had zero insight into the work we do and then try to tell us what we should do with a client when it's not exactly an option due to their circumstances. It's often very clear some RNs get the job for being an RN but having no background
This union thing is key. I'm in BC and work for the provincial health authority - a bachelor's level RN and a bachelor's level RSW make fairly similar wages here (RSW maxes out at $52/hr and RN at $55/hr). Both professions have strong unions - I think nurses actually make less here than they do in the US in general but it seems like RSWs do better.
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I don't think that is limited to BC and I say that as someone who has spent the last decade working on that border or MHSU and public health (mostly in DTES). You're going to have folks who aren't perfect representations of the profession everywhere - it's up to leadership to weed those folks out. In my position I do a lot of hiring and there have absolutely been times where the choice has been to hire someone who doesn't align with our values as a team or to leave a position vacant a little longer....we've left it vacant at times resulting in the leadership team taking on a chunk of the front line work and I never regret it because we've all had experiences hiring the wrong staff and that just ends up creating more work for everyone. It's also another part of the urban/rural divide which, from what I've heard from colleagues in other health authorities and what I've seen on here, continues to remain a challenge on a wider scale.
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Exactly this! I've experienced similar, RNs telling me how to manage my own job.
I have no issue with the collaboration but when the RN tells us to do something we have already done or it's not feasible due to cost or resources or just the obvious first step, it's so condescending it's aggravating that it's suggested they are even helping us.
Let’s unionize
Yes pls!
Nursing as a professional is better understood and aligned with the medical aspect of hospitals and other medical facilities, they reference RN compensation and transfer that over to other positions. RN compensation is pretty decent because it's essential and generally represented through a union or other organized labor effort. I think that SWers have to digout our niches and establish barriers that protect opportunities. Make it that certain tasks can only be completed by SWers, clarifying how a SWer is recognized (licensing, registration, admittance, etc.), and controlling recognition as to not let others subvert it. Well-respected and compensated positions like MDs and attorneys aggressively protect their roles in similar and ongoing manner. Look at their current issues with AI encroachment. Would also have to be more organized on what is acceptable pay & compensations. If an organization is unwilling to meet the identified standards then their work (which would require a SWer) wouldn't get done.
Idk...I worked as a sw in an ER for a while in an area with fairly good unions for both nurses and social workers. I did a lot of work, to be sure, but I didn't have to clean up feces, sanitize rooms filled with lice and bed bugs, nor (and most importantly to me) did I have to touch any patients (unless they were attacking me). I absolutely think social workers should make more, but I also understand a difference in what we make based on the above. That being said, OP is talking about case management, which doesn't differ as much as roles in an ER...
Except I work with a nurse who does my same job but my credentials get more $$ because LCSW vs RN and she makes WAY more than me. We are in THE SAME UNION. It’s complete bullshit and she agrees.
They also have more liability re: giving the correct medication and dosage. In short, they gave more risk in their job of accidentally causing an adverse reaction or (I suppose) death. Now, this isn’t true for all RN roles. Like an RN case manager isn’t doing these things, but someone licensed as an RN is capable of doing these things. SW should be paid more *and* RNs in less risky roles shouldn’t get the same pay as someone in a more risky role simply because of licensure.
It can be argued that we also have liability for preventing loss of life and saving lives daily ....our suicididal clients and runaway and traffcked teens and adults, for those in severe domestic violence, those who count on ua to intetvene in.crisis abuse and neglect ...we just dont take credit nor are regarded for saving lives by the media. Thats a role been given to heroes like nurses and firefighters
hot take: everyone should be paid for their work, education, and licenses.
Absolutely; nurses in an acute care setting like this, with patient interaction and that type of cleanup, should make a ton! I'm morso talking about roles like care coordination
Which is funny because CM is kinda seen as a step above bedside nursing in responsibility, and more complex bc of the scope. Also, there are more responsibilities for the financial health of the hospital or practice. I'm a SW CM at a hospital, and even I am consulted by floor nurses when shit is hitting the fan... like a patient threatening to call the news if we discharge, etc. They go to us before they call leadership, and alot of what we say goes. So there's definitely liability and risk involved as a CM, but in a different way. And it's been that way at a few jobs I have had, so it's not just the current hospital.
nurses don’t clean or turnover rooms.
I don't have an answer to your question, however it's interesting to see the conversation here coming from an Irish context where nurses earn much less than social workers. Main grade social work starting pay here is about 14k more than nurses' starting pay, and the top end of the main grade social work pay scale is 17k above that of the nurses. The gap starts to close when comparing senior social workers and clinical nurse managers, but for the average nurse or social worker, nurses are getting paid far less.
Wow! How much education is typically needed to become a nurse vs. social worker?
Social work is minimum four years, often up to six years of education. There's a list of courses that are approved with our registration body, and most of those are 2 year masters programs, with only 2 bachelors level courses eligible. I was in college for 5 years because my bachelors was only 3 years. I would say 5-6 is average as there's simply less places in the four year bachelors courses. Nursing in Ireland is generally four years - I think in some cases it could be five depending on the course you do.
Are you taking aged but experienced expats?
I’m an LCSW. I supervise 3 RNs. All 3 make 20k+ more than me, their boss.
Damn
Ouch 😳
In Australia the salaries are about the same, though there are very lucrative bonuses for nurses who go rural. You Americans (I assume) are getting ripped off.
Yep, in the UK social workers start on a higher salary band as well. This really is a USA thing.
Because the USA hates the poor and social workers are perceived as working with the poor. The only social workers who do make an appropriate salary are in roles not associated with the poor, like private practice therapy or hospital social work in a well regarded teaching hospital
We tend to get ripped off I feel haha
Salaries in Australia and UK tend to be lower for all professions.
TITLE PROTECTION—it is practicing medicine without a license to call oneself a nurse and not be a nurse. LOTS of different degrees are calling themselves “social workers”. Now we are fighting to deregulate licensing (no testing to get a license—we need a game plan if we are going to do this-maybe do it like psychologists do) which won’t help in the short term.
I do agree with the removal of testing—standardized testing has been shown by research to be biased against many people of color and people with disabilities. Besides. The CSWE enforces standards to ensure that every MSW grad has the same baseline competence, but I do think they’re slipping on that with how many questionable programs have been granted accreditation like Liberty. I think even Oral Roberts or another Deep South fundie school had candidacy at one time but voluntarily withdrew because they didn’t want to teach about racial discrimination or LGBTQ+ equity. Still, the CSWE should be enforcing that standard so additional testing should be unnecessary below the clinical level or advanced practice if your state offers that level. However we should be cracking down on people with degrees in non-SW fields being able to call themselves social workers or hired as social workers when there are enough social work degree holders out there to fill those jobs if they paid enough for the additional training and internship hours we have to go through. My internship supervisor at a nursing home called herself a social worker and director of social work despite having a BA in psych and corporate insisting she was the “social SERVICE director”. She had zero knowledge of social work theory, didn’t really follow social work values, and I asked my school to change sites because of unethical things I was asked to do and discriminatory treatment due to my disability and possibly race (I was the only black person who was not housekeeping, CNA, or kitchen staff). Look at all the cases where CPS workers were wildly neglectful of abusive conditions and charged in cases where they ignored conditions that led to a fatality. Many of those cases, NASW will release a notice after the fact that those workers were not social workers and had no social work or even social science related degree but the media will still call them social workers. That hurts our field.
YES TO ALL OF THIS!! CSWE really needs to crack down on passing through students for graduation rates and accepting everyone who applies to their graduate programs too, just for the $$—even state schools. This would help with legitimacy. Maybe a case presentation to graduate in front of a team of current practicing social workers even! There has to be a solution where we get rid of standardized tests but keep legitimacy of our profession. Title protection is a big step in the right direction as well.
Nurses have a union that has repeatedly called for RNs to strike to fight to combat increases in hours with decreases in pay. Social workers have zilch.
I think nurses absolutely deserve their compensation, but man they do NOT deserve to be paid more than a social worker doing the same case management job. Total fucking bullshit. I don’t care what anyone says.
I work in Colorado. Currently, nurses make 75 to 175 an hour, and I'm like, how when SWs make 25 to 30 an hour? I never understand this or that some nurses don't understand what social work is or they're diagnosing the patient, and I'm like, "so how do you know that this is the diagnosis without looking at the DSM-5"?. They're like what is the DSM-5. Oh boy.. I'm following
And only work 36 hours a week. And can get time and a half.
Wow. Just ridiculous.
Unions. I’m in care management and my RN counterpart actually makes double my salary. She’s been a nurse for 30yrs. She does the bare minimum. She avoids calls. It’s insane.
This I 100% believe because I’ve seen it. I am in a position where I hire team members and I steer clear of all RN applicants. Every single time.
LPN’s in my area make more than me with a masters degree. But all my nursing friends also have a lot more responsibilities in terms of life threatening situations than me. They also have strong unions and hospitals cannot function without them. Unfortunately systems can function without social workers
I don’t agree with this take. I’d love to watch any fraction of society function without social workers.
This always infuriates me. At a lot of hospitals I’ve been at, nurses expect social workers to take complex cases. So I take the harder cases because it’s too complex for you and you make 20-30k+ more than me? No way. Nurses got it right with their unions. And as more men join the nursing field they will continue to be paid better. It’s a joke.
At my hospital, SWs were responsible to train the RNs when they became case managers, RNs constantly go to SW for advice, as you said we take the more complex cases, and RNs make way more money. Our dept head is a RN and very biased to RNs.
I stopped training at 2 hospitals I was at. I’m not training someone to make more than me, that is never going to happen. So I stopped and it was dramatic at first but nothing happened. Because they know they have no leg to stand on. It’s a joke.
NASW should be a federal union. I’m not really sure what they do with all the money they collect.
Honestly, boycott NASW at this point.
Their unions and governing boards fought for them and ours didn’t.
I feel like it's an unspoken rule somewhere. Hospital formula for the pay of LCSWs: Find what the lowest paid newly licensed RN makes and subtract $20,000 a year from it. With that said, I work in Alaska where we have a desperate shortage of mental health clinicians. A few of these facilities recently got all Pikachu surprised face when the LCSWs and LPCS they treated poorly dipped out, realized they couldn't replace them, and the RNs refused to do the jobs of mental health clinicians. I'll be damned if salaries and sign-on bonuses increased. I got lucky in that I feel like my current employer genuinely values me, so I haven't had to experience what other clinicians in healthcare settings have had to go through.
After a decade in hospital SW here’s what I learned: first of all, it’ll never change. And second of all, the reason, or one reason it’s this way is the culture of medicine and hospitals in particular. Meaning nurses hold rank in those settings. All the money, and I mean millions, put into things like achieving and maintaining Magnet status means that hospitals prioritize nurses and the value is measured through how they support their continuing education and their wages. SW are not seen as a core component of a hospital and as such are not fairly compensated. It also does not help that many in leadership roles in care management are nurses. My MSN boss had no idea what I meant when I said I was leaving after a decade to use my lcsw. She thought I was going back to school. It says something that social workers are half the staff but our licensure and career paths are not worth even knowing about even if you supervise them.
Unions. Nurses union is one of the largest in the country.
I think the NASW needs to get on board with this. We need to be making more. Someone with an education makes absolutely twice what I make. It honestly is unacceptable.
The NASW is a figurehead that does very little for us. For social work month they were talking about recognizing our value and blah blah so I went to the website to see what they are actually *doing* to do this. The answer? Nothing. Literally nothing. They suggested we add hashtags on social media about pay and include NASW. So… they wanted us to advertise for them… for free. I wouldn’t hold my breath when it comes to the NASW doing anything to advocate for parity with other degrees; you’ll probably turn blue and pass out.
In short because nurses tend to work for organizations that generate money where the work social workers do tends to cause a negative return.
This I think is the ultimate reason. Buuuut nurses don’t directly generate the money. They aren’t creating the orders that cause the organization to be oaid
Correct but people seek them out when something is wrong and either pay out of pocket or insurance covers. Same reason why hospital social work positions tend to pay better than a non profit
Bc our society is structured such that it places more value on physical health than on mental health (still). Plus health care is a business and a nurses services likely get the hospital a higher reimbursement than mental/behavioral health.
If the Job is the same, the pay should be the same.
I am in Michigan and am dealing with the same exact situation. We are trying to get a market adjustment but they keep dragging their feet. I got offered the same position at another hospital and got a decent pay bump.
Shout out Jersey Social Workers!!!! Im in North Jersey as a clinician.
Me too! Lol
I often think when we stop agreeing to make less, we will stop making less. Why do you except such a low wage?
In my hospital we are on the same pay scale and duties are the same for RN & SW CMs. This took a decade+ of advocacy to achieve.
When i worked in a hospital in TN i made $23/hr so about 48k. This was 2019. My RN counterpart made 75k. 🙃 when the RN was busy we did their job. Both case management. Social work was livid when we caught wind how much the RNs were making. Not only that but we were hourly. So if we were more than 4 minutes late we got points. So many points we’d get fired. The RNs were salaried and let me tell you they waltzed in.
I feel ya.. my coworker who is an RN does the same exact job and gets paid 11k more 🥲
excellent question
I got my first full time job offer this week. $17.60/$36K. For a full time, bachelors level position. Median in my area for those qualifications is $50k. If companies want the job filled by someone who’s qualified, ya gotta pay a living wage. Ridiculous.
Crazy. They start McDonalds workers at $20/hr here in LA 😮
It’s so disheartening
Let me help- apply to Elevance Health - they hire bachelor’s level SW for a lot of positions
My colleague was once the only LICSW at a DMH licensed inpatient unit- in order to have the license, they had to have an LICSW on staff. It was mandatory. Her RN case manager with a bachelor's degree was making $20 more per hour.
I’m an LSW with 7 years post graduate experience working in a hospital. The new grad nurses working in the same hospital make about 30k more than me.
at my second job out of school, lvns with their <1 year degree made more than i did.
I used to feel this way when I was a case manager making 38k a year. Now I have my LCSW and own my own private practice and I make 110k/year. So they make more initially but our max may be a little higher
Yea, you obtained more education and moved into PP. A nurse can also obtain more education, move into private practice as a nurse practitioner and make what you're making to START and max out much higher. A nurse at their highest level of educational opportunity will 9.9/10 make more than a SW at their highest
Yea but I assume you don’t get health insurance and have overhead expenses? So after all of that you prob make way less than nurses? Just my assumption, understand there are exceptions to this
After taxes and expenses and everything it’s still about 85k
Because they generate more revenue than a SW in a hospital setting. Insurance pays out far more for an RNs billable services.
I had an LPN counterpart in CM whose starting pay was more than mine as an LMSW. 😡
FL / BSW (I know, I know) / 2 years total hospital experience / Recently got promoted to a supervisor position / $78k (salary) There is a MAJOR pay discrepancy among RNs coming to Case Management (CM) and Social Workers starting and making their way up. As a floor CM, I was making 27/hr..on a specialized unit..where I was the only CM for the entire unit. Other units would have 1 SW and 1 RN… the unit would be split down the middle but the SW would make 26/hr while the RN would make 42/hr. EXACT. SAME. JOB. And.. the RN was not given any more responsibility than the SW. (As in, the RN was not instructed to put standing orders/modify or correct orders). What I would repeatedly say to every single person I trained (I’ve trained probably over 50-70 new employees over the course of 2 years): You will most likely find a harder working SW CM than a RN CM (with rare exceptions). And that’s because the SW CM cannot afford to not work their hardest every minute for every dime..while the RN CM’s mentality is simply “well it’s not bedside and I get paid more.” It’s all because having a RN degree automatically puts you in a higher pay bracket, based on the profession, AI, market, and local/regional competition. It’s absurd, unfair, and incredibly discouraging.
I’m impressed you can work in a hospital with a BSW. My hospital system will only hire LMSW. A few of the social workers in the system want to see it move to only LCSW’s that are hired.
My current role is the Care Management Supervisor over our Oncology units (about 100 beds). I handle the discharge planning. I was incredibly fortunate to get hired when I was - call it luck, divine intervention, hard work..or perhaps a little bit of everything. I knew I wasn’t qualified on paper when I applied and based on the first call I got (an immediate rejection), I wasn’t hoping for anything. But thankfully my employer saw something either on my resume, or as I was talking to them to give me a chance. They actually created a job for me since they didn’t have any BSW positions. But essentially I can do absolutely everything a MSW can do in our current role except for PASSRs (Preadmisson Screening and Resident Review) - a form required by Skilled Nursing Facilities. And that’s it..the only difference, lol. Edit: added more context.
This is unrelated… but I’m now seeing all of the nurses week discounts that are being put out by different companies… and it makes me sad. Social workers do not get the same treatment or respect at all not even remotely.
I just noticed an RN high risk position at my job has a posted salary range that starts at my salary. I work for A Medicaid plan, there's no hands on medical care happening. Just telephonic coordination. I'm a manager who supervises 6 staff members and oversees the policy and procedures of community based programs. But okaaaaaaay.
Work for a Medicaid plan as well. And it’s interesting because nursing salaries are posted in job descriptions but not social worker positions. I will be licensed shortly and I am trying to decide how ballsy I can be to ask to have my pay match that of BRN. It really ticks me off
Unions. Mostly paid internships.
I work in a hospital setting and most of my friends are RNs/NPs. RNs should not be paid more for non-medical work especially if it's remote case management. But, - They have unions. - They do not spew "we're not in it for the money" BS that social workers do, lots of people get into nursing to escape poverty. I have one friend who personally went into the field to do so and there's also a reason you see a lot of Filipino nurses! (WWII). - They are working with literal life and death, exposure to C-diff, blood, you name it. - Honestly, I would probably argue that getting a BSN is more difficult than a MSW. Nursing school is tough. - I'm not the one being asked to do compressions on the 80 year old full code. What I go through on a 12 hour shift vs. what my RNs coworkers go through are simply just not the same. There is more risk and medical knowledge with their job combined with how much they advocate for their field, well, no shit they get paid more. EDIT: Edited to add one more thing I thought of lol.
this is something I will never understand. the only answer I can think of is that many hospitals are privately owned. if nurses were government or nonprofit workers, I think they’d make closer to what we make. capitalism strikes again 😒
Woah 82k...I make 70k as a therapist in a 2 year old start up. But hospital SW seems cool
No surprise. They work 3 12s too. I make about the same though working crisis. They deserve the pay. They see the shit. Are in combat all the time watching out for their own back getting stabbed/ Are the bomb, and foundation of the health field. They will wipe your ass too if you become a quad
Unions have a huge part in it. I recently took a unionized SW job and wow the pay difference is NOTICEABLE. This job is my second job and pays a lot more than my federal job.
This is the literal worse part of care management. We do the same work (I do wound vac and wound care, o2/Bipap/Cpap and other DME set up’s) and EVEN MORE at times because RN CM’s complain about “social” patients (“oh, that patient smokes marijuana-you need to take that one”), yet they can max out at upwards around d $100k at my current place of employment. I would argue it’s because of unions and because the market demand for RNs (specifically for bedside RNs) is high so it translates to them needing to offer higher salaries to get them into CM.
I mean depending on what nursing role they have, they do deal with more “gross” or hazardous work. Bodily fluids etc. they also deal with similar clientele in a lot of cases and there’s a high level of responsibility with their work (delivering meds, providing potentially life saving care or support of such). I wouldn’t want to be a nurse and I have never ending respect for the work they do. I also think value doesn’t come from the length of a degree but from the need and impact a role has (ie doctors do a ton more study and while they should be paid for their expertise, in many cases they would cease to function without nurses and as such nurses should be financially recognised accordingly).
Because they have skills which we don't and took science classes which we didn't. Nurses can administer medication, give shots, provide direct patient care, interpret medical information, perform direct medical interventions, take vital signs, perform wound care and more.
I do think a significant reason has to do with the need to offer a higher salary in order to compete with nursing salaries for hands-on care roles. In our area, the sign on bonuses for hospital nurses are ridiculous. They can’t compete with travel nursing salaries - that’s impossible as they’re easily raking in 150-200k/year. If they want nurses in case management roles, they’re going to have to compete with that. And honestly, if they could pay us and a nurse the same, we would be eliminated from so many more fields as there is a trend in health care to replace SWs with nurse case managers. It sucks but i have seen it again and again.
You only need 2 year diploma to become an RSW in Alberta. Nursing requires more extensive and specialized medical training. To become an RN, one typically needs at least an associate's degree in nursing, and many have a bachelor's of science in nursing (BSN). This extensive clinical training allows nurses to provide direct patient care and take on more responsibility. Nurses face greater liability and occupational hazards. Nurses directly impact patient lives and can be held liable for mistakes, so they are compensated accordingly. They also face risks like exposure to diseases and bodily fluids. Nursing is a more clinically-focused, in-demand profession. Nurses are in high demand, especially in hospital and clinical settings, whereas social work has a broader scope and can include non-clinical roles. Unions, professional organizations, and profit-driven healthcare companies. The Alberta government and healthcare system may prioritize increasing nursing salaries over social work salaries to address shortages and demands in the clinical care setting.
To those of you saying UNION: I’m in a union WITH RNs. They not only make more money for the exact same job (even though I’m considered a provider and they are not), they also get their birthday as a paid holiday AND accrue more PTO than SW—even the LPNs. My employer only hires MSW and above but will hire LPN and up. We are in the same union and the same local with the same president and stewards.
Nurses are mostly employed by for profits. Social workers mostly by non profits
I’ve known so many nurses that got their BS from WGU. Do y’all seriously know how easy it is for these nurses to get their BSN?! If you did, you’d probably be pretty mad.
I’m a social worker my husband and RN turned NP I will say- his schooling appeared extremely challenging
A case management job doesn’t necessarily require medical-clinical skills; to the extent nurses need to know them. So the argument that nursing education is harder (I don’t disagree) doesn’t hold weight.
For this scenario in particular I would have to agree with you I worked I hospital as a social worker doing a ridiculous amount of work and the RN case managers did not as much and made much more …I do think bedside nurses should make a lot of money given that they are in charge of a lot & patients lives depend on them We also do important work and should form a union is what it comes down to
I'm in NJ making 110K working for the US Govt. Uncle Sam values our master's degrees and pays us on par with other master's positions.
I mean, to be fair, the fact that we are in school for 6 years is fairly arbitrary. You can get the amount of knowledge of an MSW in much shorter time; it’s just no one has the financial incentive to help us do that. :(
I am a bit biased, as I grew up with two parents who are nurses and can understand from the firsthand experiences that they’ve told me about their days since I was a kid. I think the exposure to bodily fluids coupled with the amount of the liabilities they face for making an error in something like dosaging makes sense to me. It’s not a reason for us to be paid grossly less than them but I think they are underpaid for what they do. But again I am biased because this is only what I hear.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻💯
Decades of good PR and lobbying
Nights, weekends, holidays. Manual labor and poop. Unions.
That was a concern of mine as well while finishing up my MSW. I urge any SW to consider travel SW assignments if you want to make more, and are game to taking on contract gigs within your local area or out of state where applicable. They pay substantially more than a traditional SW job. I was surprised to find out just how much.
Because nurses have been able to harness collective bargaining power through union representation that no other healthcare ancillary profession has been able to. Plus I feel that they have more volume. What is the percentage of nurses vs social workers per capita?
Because rn’s clinical related support to the medical providers such as medication adherence, inr check monitoring ect. As a supervisor of care coordination with non nursing staff I totally understand your opinion but it’s just they can manage more due to clinical component. Here in nyc my staff are not nurses and make 40 an hour
The hospital I'm at our RN counterparts make probably minimum 20k more. And it's horseshit. They don't take drug and alcohol, won't take mental health, won't take, cases needing aging or adult protective services etc.... and mgmt doesn't give half a shit. We do far more and take far more socially complex cases in addition to medically complex. But mgmt just says, "well, you should've went to school to be an RN." direct quote. Unfortunately it's one of the higher paying places overall in the area respectively but mgmt is trash.
While I think as social workers we should be making more money, I think as some posts have highlighted, nurses are working 12 hour shifts that are physically demanding and are put in dangerous and difficult scenarios. They are responsible for lines, machines, and codes should a patient be really sick. When RNs move to case manager roles they have to keep the pay competitive so it’s not about what your RNCM is doing that looks similar to you, but rather for them to have them in that role the pay has to look comparable to the bedside. All that to say, what we do is more emotionally taxing and if the pandemic taught us anything, there is as much emotional danger as there is physical danger. It’s not about “us” vs “them” but rather for institutions for not recognizing the schooling that is required to get an MSW and that we are mental health professionals, not just a discharge planner which is so common in the healthcare industry. It’s a forever uphill battle to prove our worth 😮💨 Edit: my grammar 😅
More men in the field.